


Eyes-Only

by jackmarlowe



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Batman - All Media Types, Batman Begins (2005)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Jim Gordon Is Clumsy, One Shot, no one ever suspects the bloody janitor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-07
Updated: 2012-08-07
Packaged: 2017-11-11 15:03:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/479783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jackmarlowe/pseuds/jackmarlowe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim Gordon finds one tends to overhear things, fumbling through late-night shifts at the Gotham police station when he's laid up with a field injury.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eyes-Only

            In April, Jim breaks nearly every bone in his right hand and goes a little slower, for a while. It was on a job but an genuine accident, rare – Hernandez and Skye lifting a crate out of an impounded truck to get at the white powder gleaming in neat plastic bags beneath, him leaning triumphantly a second too soon, legs colliding. When it happened, he wheezed and sat down so hard and abrupt he forgot to scream. By the time breath found him again, the world was a blur of anxious uniforms and his hand was free and ghastly purple, twice its normal size – _fuck_ , he said wonderingly, and then pain crashed in.

            He puts in longer hours at work because he just can’t move properly. This is, he’s aware, ruthless to Barbara and downright cruel on the kids, but increasingly it’s only the latter that really worms at him. Everyone switches to desk lamps after eight o’clock and the hours go quicker in the dark. A week after the injury, tinfoil-wrapped dinners no longer appear in the fridge. This becomes the new routine.

            Halfway through April and around midnight, the knot of his tie comes undone and he stares half-focused into the dark trying and failing to do it up with his clumsy left hand. In the next room, Flass burps wetly through a low-voiced hey-baby chat he’s having with the telephone. Jim grimaces and counts the lights as he struggles – department’s almost empty (receptionist also on the phone, internal line, looking very busy; grim). Probably, vaguely, it’s time to go home, but the mountain of paperwork leans heavy and reproachful on his desk even though his left hand’s sore from cramped half-attempts at his usual signature.

            Carlo shuffles silent across out of the dark with his cart of cleaning materials gliding just behind. He’s lived in the Narrows for decades and is of an uncertain age; he speaks little English, and so barely speaks at all in this particular job. Jim nods to him, fumbling fiercely at his tie.

-       Evening.

            And he says nothing. Weird little oddball shit. Jim’s brain is already sketching out how he’ll eventually nod (he likes him, of all the officers, always dusts under the picture frames on his desk) and trundling along to clean up the next desk, but there he stays in the doorway, half-lit, grey-haired and bent and staring.

-       Late night for you too, huh?

-       I know, he says.

            This is not the I know that comes after yadda-yadda work talk over coffee in the mornings – Jim spots the difference easily even without seeing his face because he is so exquisitely and notoriously bad at the former. He tilts his head.

            - I know, Carlo says again, hoarse and accented. He glances out the window and Jim follows to the patch of sky where once he’d seen the Big Dipper on a very clear night. Another light stands there now, prominent and utterly ignored, this particular evening. Gotham tinges the underside of drifting clouds green and the bat flaps once, lazily, flicker-wings.

            Jim Gordon looks back at the stooped little janitor and sees just what he knows carved into the downward curve of the edges of his lips.

            The face of someone who knows is not particularly pleased with itself. He takes a deep breath and, in one deft accident, knots his tie and sits in stillness.

-       Please don’t tell me.

-       No. A ghost of a smile comes and goes as Flass switches off his lamp next-door, still murmuring through his phone call. – Only, I want to say, it does not take a detective. I know.

            When he gets home, bandaged hand throbbing, there’s a note on the table in painstakingly scrawled crayon – _Dear Daddy, I made you a special peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Mom says you can eat it now or for lunch tomorrow. Please come give me a kiss. I love YOU!_ The sandwich in question sits in the fridge on a paper plate, the crusts cut away to form a winged silhouette oozing raspberry jelly.

            _I know. I know._ And there it is, if he wants.


End file.
